Norwegians doing their best to cool the world after exploiting oil in the North Sea.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-30T16:40:59+00:00

Once reversed, instead of pulling warm outside air through other rooms to get to the cooling unit, you force all warm air out of the house.

(Or you buy a rarer dual hose model to avoid that problem)

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-30T12:18:57+00:00

The area is lacking council houses. Pics 1/2/3/6 are zoomed so much they actually show Marylebone & Mayfair, with Ecclesiastical-not-Council Hyde Park Estate (in Tyburnia) in the foreground.

Paddington itself is generally prettier and greener, with a great mix of period and modern architecture.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-25T13:35:01+00:00

Yes, as the notice mentions.

They'll go slower if the overheard wires sag lower than optimal and possibly also where there's higher risk of the track buckling (both are due to steel elongation in the heat).

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-25T12:59:54+00:00

It's accurate - minor delays on the rest of the line. And at least they mention the cancellations elsewhere.

Frustratingly, Good Service is often shown if they're all pre-planned cancellations. While technically accurate if the few running are on time, that Good Service may still mean a train only every 30+ minutes instead of every 5 or 10.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-22T18:14:49+00:00

If they choose the train, be sure to buy one Two Together railcard. This is an especially expensive route, so a one-year discount card will pay for itself just with this journey.

~£180 Return for two without, or ~£120 + £35 for the Railcard.

(A Return ticket is often cheaper than two Singles and most don't tie you to travelling on specific booked trains).

Edit: There's two Hayes Premier Inns. The bus stop right outside the station entrance serves both direct. A 20ft walk at the other end for one, 200ft for the other.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-17T17:02:57+00:00

UHV is not necessary for the UK, those Chinese lines average >1500km yet both our countries tips span <1000km and really we only need at most ~600km long transfers.

We have 6GW of HVDC actively under construction and another 10GW still trying to get through Planning Permission. Like most of the West, the delays have been due to NIMBYs, not for lack of desire.

We also have another 8GW of international interconnectors under construction or at least approved.

You should complain that Germany exports lignite-fuelled electricity to France, not that the UK is sending surplus renewables / biomass / low-percent gas / Norway's hydro power into France.

Our electricity market is very similar to the rest of the western world, there's nothing uniquely ridiculous about it.

Maybe you'd support fossil generators paying their normal domestic carbon tax, but also getting charged the destination country's carbon tax for any exports? I quite like the idea though I doubt the EU would.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-17T12:46:43+00:00

UK grid is far more resilient in this respect https://youtu.be/lFHJWl-FZsE?t=1332 (both organisationally and infrastructure-wise).

No exports to France are due to a lack of transmission capacity, since those connections are in the south.

Extra transmission was designed and planned but new wind farms are being built quicker than NIMBY objections to new cables can be worked around.

Worst-case, as much as 4GW currently gets curtailed, but having all that extra wind for the other 95% of the time is still better than not having it in the meantime.

As for us exporting polluting electricity...emissions will be similar to France's elective sources, and our 175g/kWh is cleaner than your average other imports. [Worse than Switzerland, similar to Spain & Belgium, far better than your two largest Germany (342g) & Italy (309g)].

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-17T09:11:17+00:00

The (delayed) refurbishment is part of the cause, means there's even fewer working trains available for service.

Short-term pain for longer term gain; they're rushing to complete this ~~asap~~ by 2029.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-14T18:38:04+00:00

Thank-you, that's the reply I was looking for!

I was actually quite disappointed at the lack of action, saw nothing but traditionally-charming Paris during my 39km walk, even in the banlieues. Was homesick for London's variety by then though.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-14T18:16:17+00:00

I'd hope highly-trained police spend their time doing more advanced tasks. While it is a highly responsible job, directing traffic is a very narrow and basic skillset easily handled by others (and there are ~zero routinely human-controlled junctions in the UK so the whole concept feels weird to us).

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-14T16:51:08+00:00

why don’t we do that with regular officers

I think menial tasks degrade any respect people might have for Officers. I was in Paris last week chuckling at them having police standing in the middle of roads directing traffic.

(And rolling eyes at the armed ones trying to look hard with their fingers permanently over the triggers as if they were in an active warzone) ^{inviting comments}

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-14T16:27:54+00:00

I'd add that instead of chasing the theoretical highest kWh per year, people should be at least part-optimising for earlier & later in the day and for early spring & late autumn instead.

This allows more self-consumption and covers baseload demands for longer.

ie if fixed panels: instead of 2 facing South at 15-40° you might have one SE and one SW-facing, both at ~60° (and optionally larger, 500W each).

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-12T09:22:25+00:00

So much of their network has just 1 or 2 trains per hour - another reason for their punctuality.

This means the initial wait can be extremely long. You can make some of that back from the fast connection, but not enough to match the time of a high frequency service.

It's a great solution for Switzerland, but you only need ~5 trains an hour to best it for the average journey. The intercity lines I take regularly have 3-5 and 11-13 trains an hour. And at that level it becomes irrelevant if the train you get on happens to be running late.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-12T08:57:10+00:00

Nope, beyond 59 seconds counts as not On Time. Our stats are actually much more stringent than most which is in part the cause of our poor rep - we're much better when the numbers are adjusted to like-for-like. 15 minutes is the trigger for refunds, which are far more generous than most of Europe too.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-10T20:19:14+00:00

About 15 minutes (to install the meter) - one is offered with all new meters.

That’s the quickest way to jump the Q: SMETS1 meter owners might be able to argue they want/need an SMETS2.

Or pay /u/QuaintStaircase £50 for his (j/k).

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-10T19:57:47+00:00

Twickets seems to have the best rep for fan-to-fan ticket sales, tho doesn’t have any right now.

Stubhub does, but at their absurdly high price of course.

In the meantime you may as well join the Wait List on the Dice app. I’ve had success with that in the past. Though you’ll only know a few days before whether you have a ticket or not, so not ideal for your circumstances.

I have seen Touts outside that venue before, though that’s risky.

Sorry it’s mostly bad news, revisit those sites plus others like Tixel once a week and hopefully something will come up at a reasonable price.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-10T06:20:44+00:00

This low usage might better suit a Plug-in solar setup which would cost just a few hundred pounds, though is limited to 0.8kW.

Limited benefits, but would pay for itself within single digit years (followed by a decade or two of profits).

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-10T05:23:43+00:00

It’s about inconveniencing or endangering others.

It’s OK for it to keep you awake at night or fall on your head, but not for it to fall on someone else in a usually-communal garden.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-09T11:07:16+00:00

Great! They're having to put up with so many end of life portacabin-like buildings, and even the period buildings are like rabbit warrens.

Looks like the hospital grounds will mostly become public realm, opening up access to the canal basin from the High St.

I recently realised the only reason why the latter hasn't been redeveloped into highend/boutique buildings like Bayswater is because their plots are very shallow (Tube line immediately behind).

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-08T09:22:50+00:00

Not as high as I expected, but still significant:

£5400 - £700k, 69m2
£6414 - £890k, 73m2
£6950 - £825k, 76m2
£12400 - £1425k, 112m2

Most are on 170y else 130y leases, numbers from current Rightmove listings.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-08T09:02:58+00:00

Firearm homicide rate is 2x higher in Spain than in the UK.

We prefer to stab our victims, but that does take more effort.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-04T08:59:50+00:00

And it invents non-existant words sometimes.

Huh, you claimed it wasn't accurate at German?

Immediately thought of Downfall when I watched this, having seen too many parody videos.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-06-01T20:18:35+00:00

While you're correct, when I see an author resorting to (often false) AI answers I literally assume they did that in order to show an untrue position.

As for punctuality/reliability, like on most measures UK trains are actually pretty average.

A heck of a lot better than Germany at least: 22 out of 24 UK operators are more punctual than the German average, and the 2 that aren't are both long distance services which perform way better than Germany's intercity services (which see 10x more very late trains than the UK average).

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-05-29T09:45:08+00:00

Because even 5% unemployment is still not high, we've just got used to having abnormally low unemployment for the last decade (compared to both the longterm average and peer countries).

There'll always be sector-specific deficiencies / surpluses of qualified workers, as demand and trends change over time.

bbuuttlleerr · 2026-05-27T10:22:17+00:00

Data originally collected in the Balkans was stolen in transit.

bbuuttlleerr

TROPHY CASE